


Family Reunion

by 264feet



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro Lives, Angst, Confrontations, Gen, Spoilers, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, light self harm, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 06:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11777118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/264feet/pseuds/264feet
Summary: Akechi survives Shido's palace unbeknownst to the Phantom Thieves. With the Palace destroyed and Shido sure to confess his crimes, Akechi tracks him down in the hospital.





	Family Reunion

The first time Akechi saw Masayoshi Shido in person was from the back of an enormous crowd during a record-breaking heat wave. Akechi was younger, not necessarily more innocent, and had only a few plans to assassinate his estranged father rather than a million.

The scenarios were the same up to a point-- he would reveal that he was his bastard son just in time for the death of his Shadow to take effect so that mouth-gaping shock would be the last thing on his face. But when he was able to catch a glimpse of Shido, he had to squint; the man was positively radiating light from his podium and he hadn’t so much as broken a sweat or gone red in the face and Akechi realized he couldn’t snuff out the Sun while he was stuck down here on Earth. No matter how many times Akechi would pull the trigger in the next several years, all Shido would have to do to silence Loki inside him was give him just a well-placed look, and suddenly Akechi was a child again, locked away in a strange car on the way to an unknown new foster home.

Simple, rusted restrains bound the Shido in front of him to his soiled hospital bed. He wracked his chest with dry sobs that could force no more tears past his red, puffy eyes. In short bursts he would seem to forget why he was sobbing and roll his head on his shoulders and regard various objects in the room with his unfocused eyes, then he would break into sobbing again without warning. And suddenly, something that Akechi couldn’t look directly at without blinding himself was nothing more than a flickering 40-watt bulb. 

Shido never took any drugs to avoid scandal- he had a reputation to uphold- and only drank enough alcohol to be sociable. The amount of opioids in his system now would have blast a hole in his cognitive Ship and left him floating on a dinghy. And of course, the one time he did get drunk, he set his own downfall into motion. Akechi could almost laugh. Years of being ‘useful’, plotting the perfect revenge a million times over, running laps whenever Shido rang a bell and the one who tore him down wasn’t Goro Akechi, but Jack Daniels. 

As Akechi moved closer, he could see the dried red rivers running down Shido’s face-- a scratch here, a scab there. His lackeys would sooner put their hands on a hot stove than so much as touch Shido; no, they had bound Shido’s wrists for a reason. 

He supposed that Shido’s lackeys were banking on makeup artists covering the scratches for his television appearance when he won the election. It was easy to paint someone a new face. Akechi repainted his own before he visited, albeit taking longer than he would have liked; his hands still shook with his near-death ringing in his mind. The worse injuries he had bound with a tight-fitting suit rather than a splint or a bandage; it would do to give him enough time to face his father.

Shido regarded Akechi with confusion, not with shock and recognition, not with repentance and regret, not even with anger or hatred. If Akechi didn’t know better about the Metaverse, he would have feared that the change of heart had made Shido forget all about him. 

“Akechi?” 

His voice dragged like chains across the ground. Akechi became sharply aware of how many times he was referred to as ‘he’ or ‘that boy’ rather than his name. 

“Shido,” Akechi finally acknowledged. He tried to put on a pleasant smile, the one he saved for when the cameras started to roll, but it came out a warped grimace. That mask had already been shattered.

_ “I told you not to call me by name,”  _ rang Shido’s words in his mind.

Shido’s breath hitched. He tried to divert his attention out the window, but even there he winced at Akechi’s reflection in the glass. 

“How did you…?”

“Find you out here, in a hospital in the middle of nowhere?” Akechi finished. “I simply had to go the opposite of the type of flashy hospital the media thinks you’d be kept in. Besides… this was her hometown, wasn’t it?” 

He didn’t need to know which ‘her’ Akechi meant, even though there must’ve been many he chewed up and spat out in his life. For all Akechi knew, he could be passing family whenever he walked down the street. 

The sound of sobs snapped Akechi from his thoughts. Shido couldn’t hide his face with his bound hands; he simply hunkered over and cried, his back rising and falling like he was being beaten inside. 

“You’re a disgrace. It’s no wonder they didn’t want anyone to see you like this,” Akechi said. 

He wasn’t sure if Shido even heard him. He cried loud and pathetic like a child, so wrapped up in his own despair he couldn’t even look at his son. Refusing to look at him was the most normal thing about the man, though, and an odd part of Akechi clung to that. 

He refused to look directly at the man too, even as he reached back and slapped him hard across the cheek. It rang out across the hospital but nobody dared look in at them. 

(“They never did catch the culprit behind the mental shutdowns, did they?” Akechi had said amicably to the suits outside Shido’s room. “It would sure be unfortunate if any of those were to happen here and draw attention to this poor hospital…”)

“Do you think you’ll make anything better by crying? Take it from me,” Akechi whispered, “It doesn’t change a damn thing.” 

“Akechi…” Shido groaned. “Akechi, Akechi…” As if he could acknowledge him repeatedly now to make up for all the times he hadn’t in the past. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?!” Akechi couldn’t stop his voice from rising. “Is that all you have to say for what you’ve done?! Sorry?!” 

“I…” Shido gulped. He let out a wheeze, as if he were about to sob again, but thought better of it. “I know you’re my son, Akechi. You’re just like her. Same sharp intellect, same strong will… I knew that, and even then, I just used you like a tool.” 

The air was thick with silence. It was one thing to hear hidden truths from a Shadow, but another to hear it from the man himself. 

“... Right,” Shido said, after a minute. “You must have already seen my wicked heart, with that power of yours. What I really thought of you. What I planned to do to you after I won the election.” 

“Even I was surprised with the latter,” Akechi said. “Yet I must have known. I am an ‘ace detective’, after all. I suppose a part of me didn’t want to believe it, even if it wasn’t above a thing like you.” 

“Akechi…” Shido started, and Akechi braced himself for another apology or more crying or the like. Shido took a moment as if to find the words in his drugged brain. “I wish I could have seen you… there, in that cognitive world.” 

That took him by surprise. He didn’t want Shido to know he had been caught off guard; he merely knit his brows. “So you could watch me do your dirty work?” 

“No. Fighting for your justice. Even if I was the one who should be struck down, I’m sure it was a thing of beauty,” Shido said. He stopped to take several breaths; it seemed like talking was exhausting him. “I was envious of that. I hated relying on anyone else. However…” and by this point, Akechi couldn’t help himself from looking into Shido’s eyes. “A part of me was always pleased when you reported a finished assignment. Proud, you might say.” 

Somewhere inside his chest he could feel a sick presence, twisting and scratching. Something that desired nothing but destruction, to tear this man limb from limb and spit on the remains. Something that wanted the whole world descend into chaos. Also somewhere in there was Loki.

“It wasn’t beautiful, and it’s too late for your fatherly ‘pride’,” Akechi said, his tone sharp. “You’re only praising me and trying to apologize because those thieves took your heart. Your words are empty. You would have never said these things as your true self.” 

“Maybe I don’t know much except for bits of Wakaba’s research, however…” Shido stopped to cough heavily. His shoulders looked so narrow without the padding of a suit. Without his glasses, his eyes were beady, short-sighted. “...I was under the impression that changing one’s heart just removes their unsavory desires, not the good ones.”

“Yes, and…?”

“If that is the case, was the Shido you knew the ‘true Shido’, even though this state is my default?” Shido asked. “Is a person only characterized by the sins they’ve committed, Akechi?” 

After a silent moment, he added: “you… you’re more than the pain you’ve caused those thieves, too. You aren’t just the product of the hatred you have for me and the hatred our targets would have felt for you.”

Akechi had spent so long hating his father he hadn’t considered once that Shido wasn’t the Sun but a human being. And no matter how exemplary his grades were or how many television appearances he had, he himself was just a boy who one day climbed out a window to find his father, either to meet or kill him.

_ “Look inside yourself,”  _ Joker had said. But at the time all he could see was red, bloodlust and hatred and destruction. Every grade he earned, every ounce of mascara he applied, every Shadow he shot, all of it was for the sake of getting his father’s recognition in the last moments of his life. What was he without hate? He couldn’t remember a time before he sat next to his mom waiting for her to ‘wake up’ and biting the officers that dragged him away. 

His hand crept into his jacket with a will of its own, deadly still even though the rest of him had begun to tremble. He withdrew a small bottle of chemical cleaner that he had swiped from a housekeeping cart on his way into the hospital. An act of petty thievery-- how ironic. If he weren’t holding back a scream, he might laugh. 

“You aren’t going to twist my perception with any more of your miserable words,” Akechi hissed. As he spoke, he forced stillness to his other hand and placed it on Shido’s IV. “You… I’ll make it so you never speak again.” 

Shido struggled against his wrist restraints for just a moment, only a moment, then stopped. “If that will bring you peace, then kill me. Sterilize my tainted blood,” Shido said. “I would be honored to be your last target.”

“Shut up!” Akechi shouted. His eyes burned looking too long at this man, this  _ thing _ . “This is my decision, not yours! You don’t have any control over me!” 

Of course Shido would want that; the scratches on his face screamed that he was suicidal with the grief from his change of heart. He wouldn’t have to admit his crimes, he wouldn’t have to go down in history as the fastest impeached prime minister. He would even get to frame the Phantom Thieves again. 

“Kill me, Akechi!” Shido was shouting now, the Sun burning through his clouded mind. “End my miserable life! Bring retribution to all the people I’ve crushed!” 

The Phantom Thieves-- those idiots who had thought he could be a better person, even after he admitted all his crimes to their face and stopped at nothing to try and kill them. How could he turn himself around when his role in this game was already decided? 

His first exposure to the Metaverse was to his own Palace, and when he ran to his ‘mother’, Loki revealed himself from the shreds of her flesh and just laughed, and laughed, and laughed--

“She would want you to do it, Akechi!” Shido roared. “Do it now!” 

A scream and then nothing but the sharp scent of chemical cleaner. When Shido opened his eyes, the IV pumped nothing but opoids and Akechi was on the ground in a puddle of blue. He’d covered his face with his hands, his fingertips digging into his brow. 

“Akechi…” Shido said, his soft again. Slurred, as if he hadn’t had a moment of lucidity since his admission. For a moment, Akechi wondered which world he was in now. “You’re better than just killing me. You’re free now.”

Shido’s voice faded with a gasp; red was running from the corners of Akechi’s mouth, as if he was bleeding internally. Slowly, Akechi rose to his feet. “Fine. It’s over,” he said. His voice came out as if from a mile away. “I’m done being the ‘charismatic detective’. I’m done being your son. I’m done being the ‘Black Mask’. When I die, I want it to be as nothing but ‘Goro’.” 

“Akechi-- no, Goro,” Shido began, but Akechi simply held out his hand. Shido didn’t miss the pop and crack of his bones, the way Akechi hissed in pain at the motion. With his other, he wiped the blood clean from his mouth; when he removed his hand, his pleasant smile had returned.

(And Shido would wonder for years, as his mind wandered endlessly in solitary confinement, was that smile his television smile or was saying ‘Goro’ finally enough?) 

From his window, Shido could make out Akechi’s figure for miles as he walked away. It was somewhere toward the general direction of Tokyo, somewhere he chose to walk himself instead of taking the train again. When he looked away for the faintest of seconds, Akechi was gone, and he couldn’t tell if he had collapsed or disappeared over the horizon. 

**Author's Note:**

> all these references to the sun and not even ONE mention of the prime minister we deserve, toranosuke yoshida. also don't ask me how akechi survived


End file.
